


the weight of heavy things

by anotherbuskitten



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 12:35:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9072001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anotherbuskitten/pseuds/anotherbuskitten
Summary: Before she held the sword, she was in the lake. And before she was in the lake, she was a little girl who couldn't swim.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Freya doesn't exist in this. I couldn't fit the story into either Arthurian myth or TV canon because I needed magic to be banned and I'm (fairly sure) it wasn't in the myths. I know slightly more about TV canon anyway but I tend to only watch episodes I like the synopsis when watching series' of and pick up the rest by assumption.
> 
> But, ah well, it wanted to be written.

_The water, she thought foolishly as she struggled for breath, was wet._

 

It wasn’t done you see; little girls had to find other ways to entertain themselves than what their big brothers do, even little girls with a druid for a father.

Little boys are allowed to play in the mud and the rain – and the sea. She always craved the sea.

It wasn’t the real sea of course, not in the middle of Wales, just a large lake. Her father, on the rare occasions he came to see them, brought news of the world outside their small part of it.

Camelot was a small town – rapidly increasing, or so you’d hear from the village gossips – and, even then, they lived on the outskirts; the only place an unwed woman with two children _could_ live.

Anyway, father would turn up on their doorstep always with some amazing story that always distracted his children from the fact that he’d leave the next morning.

Her favourite story, even after she worked out what kind of a man her father was, was of the ocean wizard he’d met – a man who could charm the seas calm and the fish into his boat. Her brother had been scornful of this dull use of magic and her mother been dismayed at the lesson that laziness pays off.

 

_The water was wetter than the rain had ever managed to be, even in the most fearsome of storms._

 

She’d been a joyful girl but life lost a lot of its lustre after her mother died. After her brother ‘disappeared’.

The day the queen died had been a terrible time for many families of Camelot; for any family with a mother, father, brother, sister, cousin who had ever practiced magic.

A terrible day for her mother.

A terrible month for her brother; always hammering at the castle doors, always shouting at the royals – and at her, just for pointing out that what the king had done was terrible but it wasn’t done out of cruelty. Uther, all things considered, wasn’t that bad a person.

 

_There were other things little girls weren’t meant to do. Playing with rain was one thing, but playing with swords was quite another._

 

The day she lost her job. The day she stole the sword. The day she found her brother. The Day.

He turned up in the early evening in their old house. She hadn’t back in years; all serving staff were given rooms at the castle.

She’d only stopped by to see what was left inside; one of chef’s daughters was getting married – to say nothing of her rapidly extending stomach – and she’d offered up the house as a place to live. A little out of the way but a good place for a family.

She’d been so happy at being able to make the offer; because when they took it it meant that they trusted her with this. It meant that she had proper friends and was finally moving past the labels that came with being the daughter of a witch and the sister

Jacob had been living there, for how long she could only guess, trying to learn their mother’s trade.

He’d been disgusted with her for her job and in the end that was what pushed them both to the limit.

She ran after the first spell.

 

_Dying at the hands of her brother wasn’t exactly unexpected – that it was her brother bit was a bit but she’d always thought magic would get her as well, in the end. It was a pity about the sword; it had been a nicely made thing, but she’d dropped it after being thrown in the lake, and it had sunk._

_She was sinking too, now. And the water was just so_ wet.


End file.
